Who Am I Really?

I think most of us dealing with an addiction will recognize
what I'm going to say. We each have
more than one personality or identity. There's our "Public Identity."
That’s the image that we display to all those around us. It is probably
one that shows us as being confident and in control.

Then there's our "Core Identity." That's the identity that we hide from the public. That's the person that we
beat up when we mess up. That's how we actually see ourselves and recognize that we are really are not all that good, or confident, or in control.

I have a lot of experience with both identities and I've become very good at compartmentalizing my feelings and actions between those two
very different people. Here are the
problems. My Public Identity is not an
honest image of who I really am. Yet
my Core Identity is quite vulnerable and lacks confidence and is really not that good of a person. That's why I hide it.

I desperately want to be needed and loved. And that need is coming from my Core Identity. But then when friends tell me that they love me, I feel
conflicted. I can logically understand
that they love me but at the same time I emotionally find myself saying, “Yes, but the person they love is not really me. Who they love is my fake Public Identity. If they could see my Core Identity, the real me,
they wouldn't love me.”

Does that sound familiar?
So for a while I have been thinking that what I need to do is combine those two identities into one. But then it
dawned on me that neither image is what I want. The Public Identity as not very honest and the Core Identity is not very good. So what then?

I've come to the conclusion that there has to be a "better
me" (a single identity) somewhere--a real me that I can become. A or person that is better than either
of my current identities. And that's how I
came up with this idea. The
real me should be the person that Heavenly Father and Christ are able to see. The real me should be, not who I currently am, but who I can become. And thus the real me should be the person that is described
in my Patriarchal Blessing--the one who was valiant in the preexistence--the one who is capable of returning home to my Heavenly Father.

So here is my challenge. I first need to study my Patriarchal Blessing and then
try to overlay both my Core and Public Identities with the person described in my blessing. Does that make
sense?

A friend recetly suggested that we all set as a goal for our own personal identitieis, 3 Nephi 5:13, to become "a disciple of Jesus Christ" in all that we do.